He was so grateful to have her back, he smartened up, stayed out of the pub and went looking for a job in earnest. He had really missed her and was determined to keep her home. Dessie was trying to get me to come home too, and my mother was doing her best to help him. She was at me all the time. ‘Don’t make a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Dessie Fenlon is a good man and sure, doesn’t he love the bones of you?’ Dessie had doorstepped me shortly after Rome, but when I’d ignored him, he shouted down the street after me, ‘I sorted your man in the dole office, he won’t go near you now.’ I wheeled around. ‘You did what?’ ‘Gave him the hiding he deserved.’ I remembered the bruise under Laurence’s eye and his explanation of the ledgers falling on top of him at work. ‘You stupid bastard,’ I said. ‘He’s only a friend.’ ‘Yeah, well, he won’t be anything more than that after I’ve finished with him.’ And Dessie sauntered away, hands in his pockets and head up, as if he’d just had a good day at the dog track.
